Published: 26 May 2004
Deepcut - The Response
The Rt. Hon. Adam Ingram MP, Minister for the Armed Forces, has announced his response to the Surrey Police Report, by confirming the Department's commitment to introduce independent inspection of the training, care and welfare provided by the Armed Forces.
The Adult Learning Inspectorate (ALI), established under the Learning and Skills Act 200, already inspects a number of service facilities.
The new proposals will mean that ALI will be able to routinely inspect training establishments across the whole of the Armed Forces, including initial training establishments. This will give them the responsibility to report on care and welfare issues, including commenting on any bullying or harassment they find.
This will include training offered to new recruits and MoD civil servants, as well as all service men and women.
Adam Ingram, the Minister for Armed Forces, said:
"I believe that these new proposals will deliver important benefits across all three services.
It will enable us to build substantially on the work we have already done, ensure continued and sustained improvements, and enhance the transparency of our training and education provision, which will for the first time be benchmarked against national standards and good practice."
The MOD and ALI plan to sign a Memorandum of Understanding later this year.
The ALI will conduct an annual programme of rolling inspections - each of which will be followed by the publication of an independent report.
The first inspection will begin in the autumn and will focus on initial training establishments across all three services, including Deepcut, with the first report being published by the Easter of 2005.
In cases where aspects of the training are found to be unsatisfactory the ALI will draw up an action plan and revisit the training establishment to ensure that the quality of the training provision has improved.
Each report and action plan will be published on the ALI website, with over 500 other reports currently published by the ALI every year.
For the first time MoD education and training will be benchmarked against ALI national standards, currently used to assess the publicly funded training offered to over 5 million adult learners in England.
Nicky Perry, Director of Inspection, said:
"We are independent and honest in our judgements. We reveal what does, and does not, work for the learner and publish our findings with grades that reveal the strengths and weaknesses of the training provided.
The inspection team will include members with specialist skills required to carry out this varied work. In addition, we have some inspectors who are former senior military officers who understand the forces' culture and will be able to dig beneath it to reveal a true picture of what we see.
We will also have direct access to The Minister who, I know, will be taking a continued interest in our findings.
One of the priorities for the first inspections will be initial training for the armed services, and this will include Deepcut Barracks. We routinely inspect residential training establishments, including those with young people, and it would be normal practice to include members of the inspection team who specialise in duty of care.
Our job during the inspection will be to assess what is happening within initial training for new recruits and to make recommendations for the future.
We have inspected other service establishments in the past and have the expertise to enable the MoD to achieve the training methods that our increasingly diverse and complex society demands.
Improving the quality of care and training for service personnel in the long term will benefit the armed forces and all the individuals that work within it."
One suspects that this minimalist decision is not one that will allow the parents of the four soldiers who died to draw a line under the incidents. While it may be of benefit to future recruits, it does nothing to answer the many questions that the parents still want investigated.
The announcement doesn't even indicate that Deepcut will be the first to be inspected, which one would have thought would be the least they could have ensured.
Bringing ALI in is a step in the right direction, but it won't make the issue go away.
Further information
Adult Learning Inspectorate (ALI): www.ali.gov.uk
To find a business you can trust, click on the related categories below: